Need to take control of a sales pitch, meeting, focus group or training session but can't call people out on their bad behaviour? Here are five fun strategies that sort out the texting, nodding off, chatting or endless questions without the stress!

1. Fun ways to deal with difficult people for meetings, presentations, focus groups and courses

2. If you are running an event like a meeting, presentation, sales pitch, focus group, or course

3. You may have to deal with some funky behaviour like people coming in late, texting
on their phone, or falling asleep

4. But what can you do if you can’t tell them off

5. Like when the person misbehaving is senior to you

6. A prospect

7. Or a paying customer

8. You need to take control without losing your cool!

9. First

10. Take a deep breath and remind yourself

11. That the bad behaviour is probably not about you

12. “My son is ill at home”

13. “I have no reason to be here”

14. “I got no sleep last night and it is hot in this room”

15. Then

16. Use these 5 fun strategies

17. #1 easy way to deal with lateness

18. Because you can’t do this: “we are going to have a chat about timekeeping!”

19. Close the door and start on time! Don’t reward what you don’t want by waiting

20. And because no-one likes to do this (walk into a session that has already started)

21. He won’t be late again and neither will the rest of us

22. Sorry guys!

23. You didn’t delay your session, inconvenience the
people who were on time, get stressed or
annoyed and you got an apology… all without
saying a word

24. #2 easy way to deal with discontent

25. If the group is just generally unhappy, don’t ignore it, deal with it head on

26. If the session is optional
If the session is optional

27. Start by stating the purpose of the event and who would benefit from it, then let
or make, the people who feel they would not benefit leave

28. If the session is mandatory

29. Talk about how people feel about the event first

30. If it threatens to carry on too long or become too destructive
start questions with ‘considering’

31. Like this

32. Considering we ARE moving to Alaska, what would you like to
get out of the session today?

33. Repeat until everyone is happy to get on with the
session despite their reservations

34. #3 easy way to deal with 20 questions

35. Sometimes you might need to reign people in when they get off-track

36. If they are irrelevant questions say: ‘let’s talk about that afterwards since
it’s not a group issue’

37. If the questions are relevant (but there are just too many)

38. Say: ‘Let’s get back to our session since we are running out of time’

40. Use the strategies for dealing with dominant types

42. If one or two people dominate the meeting and no-one else can get a word in

43. “My experience is blah blah blah”

44. Subtly discourage them using your position in the room

45. Without turning your back on them move to a position where you will not have eye contact

46. Sitting on their desk is also a great way to include them with your proximity but give
the floor to the rest of the class

53. Try mentioning something they said earlier. No-one is humiliated and the near miss
really makes people perk up

55. While you are talking very slowly walk towards them. Make sure you don’t just look
directly at them, that would be a bit creepy

57. This also works really well if someone is nodding off

60. It works like magic

61. Ta da, you now own the room. Want to see more fun stuff?

62. Click the slide decks to view them in a new window

63. Want to know how to make spiffy slides? Article 10 training